My old mate Vladimir (“Mad Vlad”) Zhirinovsky rings from Novosibirsk to congratulate me on the success of the stop-the boats policy and asks me if I’d be watching the opening ceremony in Sochi tomorrow. Of course, I answer, of course, but I thought he was still mad at me after Scott Morrison completely rejected his Soviet-style solution of shooting the refugees in the back of the neck before quietly dumping the bodies back in Indonesian waters at night. Of course the Soviets quietly dumped them in mass graves in the middle of the forest at night, but the ocean would work just as well, he assured me at the time. Not surprisingly Morrison at least publicly rejected it as ‘un-Australian‘, even going out of his way to write a very grovelling formal letter to Senator Hanson-Young to the same effect, so as to be sure to cover his ass should the situation at all change.

But no-one really has any idea what they are really doing to the poor refugees once they are caught trying to sneak in the back way with the news black-out still firmly in place, so one can only imagine (and hope) that Morrison will remain true to his word.

Vlad, the Russian ultra-nationalist, who the political cognoscenti will remember for throwing orange juice at an interviewer on TV, justifying his punching a woman in the face (a Greeny, perhaps?) and fist fights on the floor of the Parliament. He also advocated the re-absorption of Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan back into the Soviet empire again, but only after it was first cleansed of all practicing Muslims. Homosexuality would be fine so long as it was done in private and they left the children alone. And they’d have to agree to stop calling for same-sex marriage, which everyone with an ounce of common sense agrees is ridiculous. So it’s quite easy to see why so many people took an instant liking to him.